July, 2013:

Students enrolled in online courses often find it difficult to balance their academic, social, and occupational lives. As such, we at UWB LT have created this list of five key tips on how to be a successful digital learner.

You may find that these steps are also useful for being a successful traditional student, but they are especially critical for online students to succeed. (more…)

Based on doctoral student Katy Jordan’s personal research on MOOCs and the completion rate for such courses, she discovered that an average of 6.8% of students completed the entirety of a course. This research included 29 courses ranging from “Functional Programming Principles in Scala” to “A History of the World since 1300″.

Over the past two decades, online education has developed from a simple idea into a thriving global industry with almost 7 million students of varying ages, cultures, and financial backgrounds enrolled. While the cost and benefits of such systems in traditional educational environments are still subjects of heated controversy, it is clear that the educational benefits for credible casual learning is boundless.

In a recent article written by Sara Grossman for The Chronicle of Higher Education, a survey was conducted of 1,042 participants showing that around 74% of people were unfamiliar with massive open online courses (MOOCs). On the other side, only 22% stated they were familiar and 4% said they were very familiar with the online courses.

Though MOOCs potentially can be beneficial for higher education, potentially making the learning and education experience more affordable, accessible, and available, others have viewed it to be less appealing because many seek the “traditional college experience” that includes the grand lecture halls and face-to-face interaction with peers and instructors.